


After

by jmflowers



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Comfort, F/F, Grief, Second Person Narration, because that's my most comfortable writing style, sorting through those post-death feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 16:27:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20085247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmflowers/pseuds/jmflowers
Summary: A takeaway scene from between August 1st and August 2nd, 2019.Because after is just the beginning of healing.





	After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iwatchforher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwatchforher/gifts).

> To my fellow investigator; you're awesome. 
> 
> Second person narration is a weird little hill I'm going to die on.

You watch the world in a daze after that, everything around you dulled into a blur through tears and smoke and the unbearable ache that’s filled your chest. Some meaningless platitudes flutter off your tongue, words meant to soften the blow that’s shaken Tracy to the core. They don’t help, you know they don’t, but you can’t seem to stop. Can’t seem to make yourself do anything more than try to comfort your sister as she cries.

You’d thought yourself wise an hour ago, talking with him in the beer garden. You can feel the scratch of his scruff against your cheek where he’d kissed you before he left, smiling and mysterious as you always knew him. Just a memory now.

_Just a memory_.

It cracks like a bolt of lightning, burning and brittle where it strikes clean through your heart. The sob breaks somewhere low in your gut before exploding upwards, your chest caving with the force. One second here, the next second gone. You can picture it already in your mind, the toss of his body and the wall of heat and all these things you know will haunt your dreams from here on out.

Because your father is dead and there’s nothing to be done about it.

Tracy screams again from within the halo of your grasp, pleading with the universe to undo this. To bring him back. To let her thank him for saving her. To unwind this grief that’s already begun snaking its way into your heart and let him live.

But you know the unresponsiveness of a body starved of breath, have seen before the moment when there’s nowt left to do but call it. You can feel the weight of guilt sat atop those paramedics’ shoulders, have felt it on your own a time or two. _Are we in agreement?_

_No, no, no, we’re not in agreement._

A hand settles softly on your shoulder, yanking you back from that floating-away feeling you hadn’t realized you’d been lost in, your consciousness drifting somewhere above all of this. Somewhere safe and familiar and not here, not hurting, not watching. You twist just enough to catch Charity’s eye, just enough to see the pain and the pity that’ve flooded her features.

You want to bury yourself in her arms then, want to be wrapped up in the only thing that makes sense when the world has gone up in flames around you. Literal, life-changing flames you think, the reality of the fire still burning scorching a path through your mind. You can hear the firefighters yelling finally, can smell the retardant in the air as they try to put it out, everything forcing its way back in to be engulfed by your senses.

Overwhelming, that, like trying to fit too many things into one little box.

She doesn’t try to pull you and Tracy apart, doesn’t unravel your hands from where they’ve fisted into the soot-covered fabric of Tracy’s shirt. Instead she wraps herself around you both, steady and warm as she tugs you against her chest, grounding and stable and everything you can’t be right now.

Because your father is dead.

Because the paramedics have stopped their work on his lifeless form.

Because Tracy has splintered into pieces and you’re terrified that if you let her go, she’ll disappear completely.

She doesn’t whisper false promises in your ear, doesn’t mutter words of comfort to fill the holes blooming in your heart. Your voice has gone raw from trying to put some truth in them yourself, it’s almost a relief to tumble into her silence, to only be rocked as the heavy hand of this grief bears down upon you all.

Someone asks for Tracy when she finally stops screaming. A paramedic, you realize only after a flash of neon fills your vision. They lift her crumpled form from your arms, taking her to the ambulance and the oxygen tank and the things you should’ve been fretting about instead of holding her.

The things to sort, that’s your responsibility – transport of his body and funeral arrangements and where he’ll be buried. It’ll fall onto your shoulders as these things always do. It nearly springs you into action right then and there, your muscles stiffening for a moment as though you need to leap to your feet and begin immediately.

She brings you back, squeezing you tighter to herself, breaking the silence with a kiss against your head. “Don’t,” she pleads, “Give yourself a minute.”

But you had a minute, didn’t you? Just now, as Tracy cried, you had your second to fall apart. It’s time to be the big sister, it’s time to be a good daughter, it’s now that you need to start thinking about his will and what happens next and how to tell Johnny that –

It cracks again, clenching all your insides before they burst with another wave of sobs. Johnny, without his grandfather. Johnny, losing out again. It feels selfish to even think it, but the pain for your son rattles in your chest just the same, unforgiving and relentless in its pursuit of destruction.

That’s what this is: destruction. The factory. Your father. All your lives. Everything, destroyed.

“I’ve got you,” Charity swears, catching your tears in the hollow of her throat. “I’ve got you.”

~~~

There’s a trip to hospital, where Tracy retreats into a shell of herself. You somehow manage a smile at the nurse running tests but it feels distorted and broken on your face, like a jagged slice through your skin. You thank them for their help when they release her, trying to remind yourself to be grateful that the smoke inhalation wasn’t any worse. Too long she was in there. Him, too.

Your brain flashes to a textbook image of lungs, black with soot. You’d imagined then the pain for the animal, the struggle to breathe through such a build up of sludge; you think now of your father, your sister, your family. Trapped inside a building gone up in flames.

The drive home is quiet, Charity’s hands wrapped so tight around the steering wheel her knuckles have gone white. You don’t remember when you’d decided she would come along, don’t remember who’s gone home to take care of the boys. You should be thinking of those things, should care whether Johnny’s had his tea or Moses his bath and whether they’ve both gone to bed without a fuss, but there’s a great cloud settled over your mind again and it’s enough just to sit upright. Anything more is too much.

All of this is too much.

Tracy doesn’t even say goodbye as she climbs out the car. Doesn’t say thanks. Doesn’t mutter sorry. Barely a breath leaves you before the door to Tug Ghyll is slammed shut and she’s gone, too. It pricks at something inside you that you’re not ready to touch yet, something dark and sinister that shouldn’t belong.

Because you’ve been sunshine, haven’t you? Teeny and her rainbows, Teeny and her smiles, Teeny and her easygoing attitude. The nickname dies with him, too, one more thing left a memory.

_He’s gone, sweetheart. He’s gone._

You’d lost track of Megan somewhere in the bustle – should check on her, too. You know Tracy won’t. It’ll be your job to tell Johnny. And Moses and Noah and whoever else needs telling. Be your job to call the funeral home, talk to Harriet about a eulogy. Call your mother and leave a message so she doesn’t have to read it in the paper. Call the paper and get something nice printed.

“Hey,” Charity whispers, breaking the chain of spiralling thoughts. You drag your eyes to her face, softened so beautifully you nearly dissolve into tears again at simply the sight of the crinkles above her cheeks. She looks as tired as you feel, as though she’s already burdened herself with the weight of your pain. “It doesn’t have to be sorted tonight,” she reminds you – because she knows you. God, does she ever know you.

You do cry then, tumbling forward into her arms as the tears return. Nearly cried out, you’d said at the hospital, when the well had momentarily dried up and you’d gone stationary with shock. It’s real again now, blurring and harsh but unfathomably true.

_You give great advice_, he’d said. Advice enough to send him back up to the factory, to urge him inside when it wasn’t safe. Not such great advice now, when it’s killed him. Not such great advice when it’s partly your fault.

The guilt swoops in loudly, building momentum when it meets the ache of grief. “He went up there because of me,” you sob into Charity’s neck, shaking with the force of the admittance. They’ll hate you once they know – Megan and Tracy and Charity, too – will blame you for saying something daft enough to get his mind whirring. He’d been safe out back of the pub, would’ve stayed there if you’d just focused on helping Charity instead of slipping out to speak to him.

“I told him – ” you’re cut off by a hiccup, struggling for enough air to get your words through. It makes you think of him now, being out of breath, his final moments forged in your imagination. “I told him something that made him go up to the factory.”

Charity shakes her head, pulling away enough to look you straight in the eye. “None of this is your fault, babe,” she swears, swiping at the wetness on your cheeks, “You had no idea what was going to happen.”

“But what if I had?” The last of the words fall away as another sob echoes off your lips, nudging you forward as she wraps her arms more securely around you.

“If you had…” she trails off, rocking slowly, rubbing careful hands down your back. You’ve seen her like this with Moses, soothing him after a bad dream. She’d joked after about how out of her depth she’d been, how not equipped she was to offer comfort. But you’d seen it on her face, seen the relief when he’d clung to her instead of shying away. “If you had known, you would’ve done everything in your power to save him, wouldn’t you?” She nods, knowing the answer without you even saying it. “You couldn’t have known, though. And you can’t blame yourself for what you can’t change.”

She’s better at it than she believes, you think, gratitude blossoming amidst the pain. You’re lucky, you know, to have someone to go home with. To have someone to return to after a day like this. You think of Tracy all alone, sat up in Tug Ghyll with no one to hold her.

You sit up, wiping roughly at the tears on your face, sucking in a shuddering breath as your focus redirects. “I should go to Tracy,” you decide aloud, already reaching for the door handle. Charity’s hand closes around your leg, halting your escape momentarily. It makes you think of the boys, that, cuddled in their beds upstairs; the way their little arms wrap around you, heads bobbing at waist height as they tell stories of their days. “You should… you should go inside,” you murmur.

She shakes her head, leaning closer and tightening her hold on your thigh. “Chas is there,” she says, “I’ll come back in the morning to get them ready for Holiday Club.” You’re not sure when she called them, when she told you they were coming back early to mind the boys. You try to fit it into the timeline of the day in your head but it’s all tossed about and confusing, nothing much making sense in the chaos.

“Thank you,” you whisper.

She shrugs, reaching upwards to slide a hand around the back of your neck, cradling all this madness tangled up in your thoughts. “I’ve got you, yeah?”

She does, she does.

You do.


End file.
